The course website and blog for the Fall 2016 instance of Penn State's SC200 course

Did my title grab your attention? If you are anything like me, your life is being constantly interrupted by worry and over exhaustion of the mind. I remember asking my friend one evening if I had always been an uptight person, and she replied truthfully that I most certainly had not. She said she noticed the change in me about a year ago. Now I personally don’t know when I made the switch from my care-free crazy personality into this anxious person who worries about everything. Maybe it’s when I grew up, and realized how intense and big the world actually is. All I know is that since I entered into this life style I have been realizing how huge of a problem it is. I am not the only one who is living like this. It sucks- I feel like I’m wasting my time and life. So let’s talk about it.

After doing more research into this subject I realized there is a difference between being stressed and having anxiety, and that I might just be stressed out. A clear way to think about it according to Health Status is that there is a stressor that triggers us to be stressed, and when that stressor has gone away but we still stay stressed, that’s when we can label it as anxiety. Anxiety is more orientated around the feeling of FEAR, or being constantly worried. This constant apprehension sometimes does not even have a source, which only adds to the anxiety (health status.com).

Many of us have heard of the “fight or flight” response that has been aiding us in survival for years. Knowing how this response works can help us better understand what is happening to our bodies when we are constantly stressed with no stressors, or in others words anxious. Our adrenal glands release adrenaline and the hormone cortisol, which is what speeds up our breathing, heart rate, and blood sugar (YourAmazingBrain.com). This response has helped us tremendously in surviving- but only when it’s short-term. If this response is activated in the long-term then it can have detrimental affects.

So if you are stressed or think you have anxiety, how do you fix all of this? The good thing is that there are ways to cope. Stress in short-term can keep us alert and serves a function that helps us deal with life’s stressors. In other words stress has a mechanism and that is to help us survive by kicking in the fight or flight response. We know stress’s mechanism because we know why it works and how it works: we have a good understanding of it.

I hope you are not too sad because I haven’t provided any solutions for getting rid of you stress or in a more serious case, anxiety. I think I will save that research and information for another blog- if someone hasn’t already covered it that is! Best regards.

Recently I got into a dispute with my significant other. We seemed to clash with the views we had on spanking children. I will preempt this blog with the fact that I am an extremely sensitive and emotional person, with a mother whose profession is Early Childhood Education- I’m guessing you know which side of the argument I took. I attempted to not overreact and failed hopelessly. I just couldn’t get over it, and I knew I needed to do my research so I had facts to back me up; luckily, my mom sent me a really helpful article.

Psychology Today wrote a wonderfully clear-cut article on how spanking your kids is harmful to their health. Their evidence is backed up with over 50 years of research done by the University of Texas and the University of Michigan. After sampling over 160,000 children the results discovered that spanking your child was almost as detrimental as physical abuse; such as punching (Psychologytoday.com). In the article they split the outcomes into short-term and long-term, and they explained the unfavorable effects that each brought with it. Short-term effects of spanking for discipline were noted as depression, anti-social behavior, a higher level of aggressive behavior, low self-esteem, and a poor relationship formed between the parent and the child. The long-term results displayed signs of mental illness, anti-social behavior, as well as anxiety (Psychologytoday.com). The apple doesn’t seem to fall far from the tree either- adults who were spanked as children tend to spank their own kids while adults who were never spanked as a child cannot bear the idea of it.

I know that this can be a controversial topic, and since I started researching this I have been asking all my friends whether or not they were spanked when they were younger. I received an alarming amount of stories of soap in the mouth, wooden spoons on the backs of hands, leather belts, and spanking. It seems a great deal of people in my life were more familiar with physical punishment than I knew- and my friends are amazing…so who am I to judge? Everyone is raised differently with various backgrounds and parents who deal with things in their own ways.

Of course we need to be skeptical of the information we hear everyday- a lot of it is complete bogus. Like the pop-quizzes in class have been demonstrating, we need to be wary of what we read, and how/if we are going to decide to act on it! Direct causality could turn out to be reverse causality. If some of my friends were spanked when they were younger and are now fine, how much harm did the spanking do? The research shows that it is not beneficial in any way, and that although it can give you immediate obedience, it could be disastrous in the long run. And we always need to consider the correlation could be completely up to chance. Basically we need to think critically- as Andrew reminds us daily.

Although I agree with the research and my opinion is obviously biased in this blog, I also know that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs. And if you are ever a parent one day you can choose how you want to raise your child. I hope you found this blog interesting and revealing- let me know your thoughts!

If you are just as interested in this topic as I am, here is another short but informative article- Aha!

Why do we get jealous? I’m talking about couples. It seems like a straightforward question with a straightforward answer, but some of the things we do out of jealously are questionably….psychotic. We do things that are unlike our personality, we come out of character, take risks, become angry, and even cause relationships to end. Luckily, I am not the first one to be asking this question.

In today’s society the ability to be suspicious of your loved one is made even easier by the rapid advances technology has been making. You have to worry about Facebook, Snapchat, phone calls, and text messages that can easily be deleted with one swipe of the finger. The process of being jealous already sounds exhausting and emotionally draining, so why do we do it? The answer lies in the function of being jealous, which takes us very far back.

When men and women’s main concern was survival and reproduction, women had the advantage of knowing that their child was theirs. Men, however, did not. So constantly guarding their mate and the characteristics that define jealously were required if a male wanted to maintain certainty of his offspring. This is otherwise known as cuckolding.

When talking in class about correlation and causation, there could be many reasons why we get jealous. It is unrealistic to say that there is ONE reason for why we get jealous. There are many outside (confounding) variables that could affect how someone is acting!

What’s fascinating is that a study done at the University of Michigan found that men get more jealous of the idea of sexual infidelity (i.e. picturing a woman trying different sex positions with another guy), while women get more upset thinking of their partner falling in love with someone else (emotional infidelity). But women have to be choosy too- they need resources and someone they can rely on to help them raise their offspring. Men can impregnate as many women as they want and produce millions of sperm a day while women can only produce about one egg a month, making them the more valuable resource.

In a Women’s Health article, scientists declared they think the left frontal cortex of the brain that controls emotions such as shame has to do with the feelings of jealously. The article touches on Reactive Jealousy, Suspicious Jealousy, and Delusional Jealously, claiming that the dopamine system which adjusts chemicals that affect happiness are also involved in spurring jealously. Jealously can trigger a stress response in humans as well. All of these findings point toward the idea that jealously serves as a function to help us survive…so the next time you’re feeling jealous and ashamed, don’t! You’re claiming what’s yours!

Hi my name is AP- it stands for Anna Pearl which is my first name but AP is much easier to remember, yes? I’m a townie so I’ve lived here my whole life (yay). I’m an Anthropology major & Psych minor, which summarized in short means I like to study people (and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life). Like pretty much everyone else this class fulfilled my GenEd requirement for Science. From friends I heard that this was a science class for people who weren’t good at science, which is frustrating because although that may be true, that’s more of a mind set which spreads to the point where no one tries anymore.

I don’t want to say why I’m not planning on being a science major because I don’t like ruling out such a cool possibility. I’ve always been in awe of the information science can give us and help us understand. Although I find science to be extremely fascinating and rewarding, it is sadly a field where my mind doesn’t click as easily with. I love science but I don’t love it enough to put the work into it to major in it…which is why I’m not a science major- how about that? What’s important is to have a growth mindset! All the articles I tried to find I knew no one would take the time to read so here’s a SHORT video instead.

I’m a little intimidated for this class but I think it’s only because I can tell Andrew wants to push his students and make us learn- which takes work and effort, but is worth it! Cheers to a fun semester everyone.